When the silence speaks loudly and carries the message

What I heard on the Sunday talk shows last week gave me hope. What I heard was silence from a corner of the political world that is usually anything but silent.

What I heard on the Sunday talk shows last week gave me hope. What I heard was silence from a corner of the political world that is usually anything but silent.

On "Meet the Press," David Gregory said that they had invited 31 "pro-gun" senators and not one would appear. On "Face the Nation," Bob Schieffer said that they had invited all Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the committee that will matter most in the coming debate over laws dealing with weapons. Not one would show up.

Sunday talk shows without Republicans, and especially Republican senators, are not normal.

Roll Call, the newspaper that has been counting heads on Capitol Hill since 1955, found that in 2009 and 2010, Republicans held a 52-48 edge in appearances on those shows. In 2011, that dominance soared to 64 percent. Another study of guests from August 2011 to February 2012 found that Republicans and/or conservatives made 282 appearances to 164 by Democrats and progressives in roundtable discussions. In one-on-one interviews, the numbers were staggering — 166 Republican guests to 70 Democrats.

The embers at the United States consulate in Benghazi, Libya, were barely cold when they showed up to condemn the administration's handling of the attack yet they stayed home last Sunday because they deemed it too soon to have a discussion about violence, guns and the law.

The outpouring of grief says something else. When a small town has to spend the weeks before Christmas burying 20 children and six adults, it's not too early to have these talks. For those victims and that community, it's too late.

The reason so many politicians were reluctant to spend the first Sunday morning after the shootings in their usual way is clear. They have long resisted new restrictions on gun ownership and knew that this latest slaughter would bring demands for change. If they had a good response, they would have been on the panels proposing them. But they don't, so they stayed home.

I don't know what it will take to reduce this violence but I do know that we need to stay away from false choices. Some already have noted that there was a knife attack in China on the same day as the shooting in Connecticut and ask if we need to ban all knives. If it came down to laws that would leave 22 with stab wounds or 26 dead from bullets, I know which one I would choose.

I'm not a gun owner, which in some circles would disqualify me from holding an informed opinion on this. Following that logic, we'll have to stop letting men talk about laws regarding contraception and abortion.

What we need is an acknowledgement that something has to change and a sense of urgency. One side has weighed in. It's another Sunday morning, we need to hear real proposals from the other side, not more false choices and distractions.